Two years ago, Maria Hassabi presented On Stage at the festival that left a lasting impression, marked by her signature slowness and magnetic intensity. She now returns with a new group choreography, presented as a world premiere in Bozar’s newly renovated theatre.

For this creation, Hassabi places a long bench along the lip of the proscenium, redefining the stage as a narrow, linear space. Along this line, five performers move through a series of meticulously composed tableaus, their bodies suspended between rest, anticipation, and observation, sustaining a continuous tension within their unfolding narrative. The bench becomes at once a support, a display, and a frame for the choreography. Facing the audience, the performers establish a parallel field of attention.

Alone and together, among themselves and with the audience, they negotiate presence moment by moment. In this space, our gaze is drawn into one of the festival’s most radical forms of spectatorship, as each gesture traces a choreography of dots and signs, a sentence we are endlessly invited to compose.